Attention

Thursday, August 03, 2017

BOSTON — Federal investigators have busted up a Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles scheme they say involves four state workers now charged with “aggravated identity theft” after they allegedly created false identification documents for illegal aliens, among other actions.

Prosecutors say the scheme, announced Wednesday by the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s office, was carried out at the Haymarket RMV in downtown Boston and involved clerks creating false identities and addresses that were subsequently used to commit voter fraud within the city.

The investigation began in October 2015 after Massachusetts State Police received an anonymous letter alleging that “an employee by the name of Evelyn Medina” had been using her job at the Haymarket RMV “to provide personal information to people within her community,” according to an affidavit submitted July 24 by Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent Anthony P. Russo Jr..

Russo states in his affidavit that he used an informant to learn more information about the practices occurring at the Haymarket RMV. Medina, 56, identified in court documents as “a national of the Dominican Republic and a citizen of the United States,” allegedly made hundreds of Social Security Number queries “with no transaction activity associated with them.”

Two best entries will win $1,500, $500 scholarships to Md. college or trade school;To enter, take picture, write creative caption and use #shopmdtaxfree on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram during Tax-Free Week

EASTON, Md. – Comptroller Peter Franchot joined with the Maryland Retailers Association today to announce a new contest coinciding with Shop Maryland Tax-Free Week that will see two winners receive $1,500 and $500 scholarships, respectively, to any Maryland university, college or trade school. Comptroller Franchot will also visit 9/10 Condition Sneaker Boutique in Baltimore on Tuesday at 1 p.m. to promote tax-free week and the contest.

Leading up to and during the annual Shop Maryland Tax-Free Week, which takes place August 13 to 19, shoppers should like or follow the official social media pages on Facebook (Shop Maryland Tax Free), Twitter (@shopmdtaxfree) and Instagram (@shopmdtaxfree).

Then during the tax-free week, take a picture, write a creative caption and use #shopmdtaxfree to submit an entry on any or all of the social media platforms.

We've frequently argued that public pension funds in the U.S. are nothing more than thinly-veiled ponzi schemes with their ridiculously high return assumptions specifically intended to artificially minimize the present value of future retiree payment obligations and thus also minimize required annual contributions from taxpayers...all while actual, if immediately intangible, underfunded liabilities continue to surge.

As evidence of that assertion, we present to you the latest public pension analysis from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. As part of their study, Boston College reviewed 170 public pension plans in the U.S. and found that their average 2016 return was an abysmal 0.6% compared to an average assumed return of 7.6%.

Meanwhile, per the chart below, the average return for the past 15 years has also been well below discount rate assumptions, at just 5.95%.

Malia Rolt, a self-proclaimed “hardcore feminist,” supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement, and LGBTQ rights advocate wrote an article in the latest edition of Affinity magazine in which she seriously questioned the rights of white men to vote in the United States.

In a piece titled “Do White Men Really Deserve to Vote?”, Rolt wrote, “Now, history lessons aside; many people who disagree so far might be thinking, ‘Yes, all this injustice that happened in the past was undoubtedly awful. However, two wrongs don’t make a right.’ However one can’t be sure if withdrawing the white man’s vote could be considered a ‘wrong.'”

“Historically, white men have had few problems voting and the way things are going, they will never understand the kind of injustice others have faced,” Rolt explained.

NAACP officials say their recent travel advisory for Missouri is the first that the civil rights group has issued for any state.

But the warning follows a recent trend of similar alerts issued by other groups for vulnerable people around the United States.

The travel advisory, circulated in June by the Missouri NAACP and recently taken up by the national organization, comes after travel alerts began appearing in recent years in light of police shootings in the U.S. and ahead of immigration legislation in Texas and Arizona.

The Missouri travel advisory is the first time an NAACP conference has ever made one state the subject of a warning about discrimination and racist attacks, a spokesman for the national organization said Tuesday.

The Missouri travel advisory is the first time an NAACP conference has ever made one state the subject of a warning about discrimination and racist attacks, a spokesman for the national organization said Tuesday.

When you're on vacation, the last thing you expect to happen is to wake up in a foreign hospital, unsure of how you got there. This has unfortunately been the case more than once at resorts in Mexico lately, where visitors claim their drinks have been made with "tainted" or "substandard" alcohol.

After a series of frightening and sometimes deadly incidents at resorts in Mexico, the U.S. State Department issued a warning last Wednesday that "consumption of tainted or substandard alcohol has resulted in illness or blacking out."

The incidents have occurred to both teenagers and adults near Cancun and Playa del Carmen. One Wisconsin family lost their daughter, 20-year-old Abbey Connor, in January, USA Today reported. Just hours after arriving on vacation, Abbey and her brother Austin were found face-down in the pool. Their son had a concussion but thankfully survived.

A top official on the National Security Council was fired last month by National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster reportedly after he argued in a memo that President Trump’s administration is under sustained attack from globalists and Islamists.

Rich Higgins, a former Pentagon official who served in the NSC’s strategic-planning office as a director for strategic planning was fired on July 21, The Atlantic first reported.

The memo, written in late May, described threats to the administration by globalists, bankers, the “deep state,” and Islamists.

“Globalists and Islamists recognize that for their visions to succeed, America, both as an ideal and as a national and political identity, must be destroyed,” it said.

Higgins was called into the White House counsel’s office two weeks ago and asked about the memo. Later that week, he was told by McMaster’s deputy that he was losing his job.

The memo compared what the Trump administration was facing to a Maoist insurgency.

“In Maoist insurgencies, the formation of a counter-state is essential to seizing state power,” the memo said. “Functioning as a hostile complete state acting within an existing state, it has an alternate infrastructure. Political warfare operates as one of the activities of the ‘counter-state.’”

“Because the left is aligned with Islamist organizations at local, national, and international levels, recognition should be given to the fact that they seamlessly inter-operate through coordinated synchronized interactive narratives … These attack narratives are pervasive, full spectrum, and institutionalized at all levels. They operate in social media, television, the 24-hour news cycle in all media and are entrenched at the upper levels of the bureaucracies,” it said.More here

"Spare the rod and spoil the child," the saying goes, but new research points to a much different conclusion. Spanking young kids can negatively impact future temperament over a decade later, according to scientists from the University of Missouri.

Even though the majority of Americans approve of spanking, data shows it's not only an ineffective way to discipline, but it actually has the opposite effect. A 2016 meta-analysis using data on over 150,000 children over a 50-year period linked corporal punishment with aggression, antisocial behavior, mental health problems, cognitive difficulties and low self-esteem, among other negative outcomes. Basically, just because your parents spanked you doesn't mean it's a good idea to spank your kids.

The most recent research, published in Developmental Psychology, came to similar conclusion but specifically looked at racially diverse, low-income families enrolled in the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project. While experts hadn't conducted many studies on this part of the population before, the results still came out against spanking.

Footage involves seven police officers during a car search which led to arrest

Dozens of drug- and firearm-related cases now dismissed by State Attorney

The 34 cases relied on evidence from the three officers in the video

In addition, some 100 cases are currently under review as a result

New video allegedly showing Baltimore police officers planting evidence has emerged just days after it was revealed that footage of similar actions had led to the dismissal of dozens of drugs cases in the city.

The footage is claimed to show several officers in the Maryland city collaborating to place drugs in a car which were later found during a search that led to an arrest.

The events, which have led to charges being dropped in at least one case, were captured by multiple police body cameras while officers were seemingly unaware that their actions were being recorded, the public defender's office said.

Commentary and opinion are labeled as such on MarylandReporter.com and represent the opinion of the authors. Like all postings, they can be commented on below the article at any time as long as the comments are civil.

By Michael CollinsFor MarylandReporter.com

Baltimore’s soaring murder rate demands a forceful response by the city government. It must immediately implement Stop and Frisk policies in violent communities and institute Project Exile.

Baltimore saw 34 murders last month, 96 in the last three months, and 204 since the beginning of the year (as of Tuesday morning). Nearly 90% of Baltimore’s homicide victims were African-American and only 6% were white (in a city 31% white).

So far this year, 181 black residents of Baltimore—mostly young men—have been killed on the city’s streets. That gives Baltimore the grisly distinction of having a murder rate more than double that of Chicago, and nearly 10 times that of New York City.

Just because a person is smaller than you doesn’t mean that they won’t hand you your backside on a silver platter, which is a mistake that a lot of people make when engaging in a fight. Often smaller a opponents are more agile and able to move more quickly. Their strength can also be underestimated, as you wouldn’t typically think of a smaller fighter as being as strong if not stronger than someone bigger than them.

If that’s what you believe, then you’re about to experience 53 seconds of complete and total confusion.

Just when the larger boy in the grey shorts thought he had the upper hand in the fight, the smaller boy picks him up and dumps him on the ground like he is nothing. (I think that he’s taken some classes, because while his strikes were a little wild and without any real form, he managed to pick that boy up like a sack of potatoes.)

The small boy then goes to town on the teens’ head with repeated shots. If it wasn’t so violent it would actually be kind of impressive.

(SALISBURY, MD) – A seventh suspect was arrested last night in Virginia in connection with the murder of a man four days ago in Wicomico County.

The suspect is identified as Brandon Yarns, 21, of Salisbury, Md. He is charged on a warrant with first degree murder, second degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, first degree assault, second degree assault and reckless endangerment. Yarns is currently being held on a fugitive warrant in the Accomack County Detention Center. Extradition proceedings are being initiated to return him to Maryland.

State Police investigators had obtained an arrest warrant for Yarns and a search was underway for him by the Maryland State Apprehension Team. Members of that team located Yarns at about 6:00 p.m. yesterday in Horntown, Va. He was arrested without incident.

Yarns is the seventh and believed to be the final suspect to be charged in connection with the murder of Tavin T. Molock, 32, of Salisbury, Md. Molock was found injured in the 400-block of Bethel Street by responding Salisbury Police Department officers shortly before 11:30 a.m. on July 30, 2017. Molock later died at the hospital.

Our tiniest patients need YOU! Peninsula Regional Medical Center is looking for a few caring baby cuddlers to volunteer in our Special Care Nursery. Nothing is more comforting to a baby in distress than a soothing, warm presence. Studies have shown that premature infants who are held and cuddled more experience significant health benefits. If you love cuddling babies, and are willing to go through our volunteer orientation and fingerprinting process, please apply through our PLUS Volunteer program:https://www.peninsula.org/join-our-team/plus-volunteers

A 70-year-old Vietnam veteran was minding his own business watching television in his Taberg, New York, home when law enforcement knocked on his door, walked in, and then seized his firearms.

The veteran, Don Hall, was then told by the deputies that they had a right to take his guns, saying he had a record of mental issues. They took his handguns, then had the nerve to ask him if he had any long guns, then took those also.

Hall, needless to say, was absolutely bewildered as to how they came to that conclusion, and he tried to think back to what he could have said or done in the last 70 years that had anything to do with mental issues.

He was flabbergasted and told the media “I was guilty until I could prove myself innocent. They don’t tell you why or what you supposedly did. It was just a bad screw-up”

ANNAPOLIS, MD – Secretary of State John C. Wobensmith and Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh announced today a Cease and Desist Order has been issued against We Can Cer-Vive! and its president and founder, Mia Wright. The order follows an investigation that revealed multiple violations of the Maryland Solicitations Act, including using false and misleading advertising materials in connection with a solicitation and failing to register with the Secretary of State before soliciting.

“Charities who deceive the public will not be permitted to solicit in Maryland,” said Secretary of State Wobensmith. “We will investigate them, and if an investigation confirms they're scamming the public, take those steps necessary to shut down any and all unlawful practices.”

“Consumers who are generous enough to give shouldn’t have to worry whether their hard-earned money is being sent to sham charities,” said Attorney General Frosh. “Thanks to the work of our office and the Secretary of State’s Office, we are stopping yet another scammer from defrauding the public, and giving Marylanders the confidence that their contributions will be used by legitimate organizations.”

We Can Cer-Vive! solicited charitable donations and falsely claimed to be a 501(c)(3) organization using its Web site, various social media outlets, and various fundraising events prior to the cease and desist order. An investigation by the Secretary of State’s Charities and Legal Services Division, aided by the Office of the Attorney General, showed that the organization was allegedly misrepresenting itself as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and falsely claimed an affiliation with another nonprofit organization in marketing and advertising materials distributed using these various outlets. The charity was also not registered with the Secretary of State before it began soliciting charitable donations.

When Ralph Chou was about 12 years old, he took all the right precautions to watch his first solar eclipse.

"I did other stupid things, but when it came to looking at that eclipse, I was being very careful," says Chou, a professor emeritus of optometry and vision science at the University of Waterloo, who's a leading authority on eye damage from eclipse viewing.

The upcoming total solar eclipse will be the 19th one he has seen after a lifetime of eclipse chasing. And Chou is worried about first-timers and other folks who might look up at the spectacle without much forethought.

Tens of millions of people are expected to view the first total solar eclipse visible from the contiguous United States in nearly 40 years.

"Unfortunately, I think it is probably true that during every solar eclipse, there's bound to be somebody who does get hurt," says Chou.

In case you missed it, the Democrat Party and its mainstream media machine has focused all their resources this week on the emerging criminal conspiracy between former DNC chief Debbie Wasserman Schultz and her IT expert, Imran Awan, et al.

Just kidding.

They actually focused all their 24/7 print and bandwidth on the fact that the House Judiciary Committee formally requested that Attorney General Jeff Sessions investigate Barack Obama‘s AG Loretta Lynch, Obama’s FBI director James Comey, and of course Obama’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her criminal co-conspirator Bill Clinton.

Just kidding.

Of course, The New York Times and The Washington Post, along with all their Demo download media outlets, remain totally focused on their delusional Trump/Putin collusion illusion, the fake news farce they have been proliferating, ad nauseam, since President Donald Trump took office.

But some Democrats are quietly retreating from the Trump/Putin front because of the increasing risk that the fraudulent charade will ricochet.

OCEAN CITY — With the 44th Annual White Marlin Open (WMO) looming next week, the angler and boat owner who was disqualified from last year’s tourney by a U.S. District Court judge in June following a lengthy trial filed an appeal on Wednesday seeking to overturn the judge’s ruling.

In June, a U.S. District Court judge essentially ruled in favor of the WMO and the other plaintiffs in a federal interpleader case against the supposed winner of the glamorous white marlin division in 2016, angler Phil Heasley and the Kallianassa out of Naples, Fla. Heasley’s 76.5-pound white marlin was the one and only qualifying white marlin weighed during 2016 event and was symbolically awarded a tournament-record $2.8 million.

However, apparent rules violations regarding the time of the catch and subsequent deceptive polygraph examinations by Heasley and the Kallianassa captain and crew landed the case first in Worcester County Circuit Court and later in U.S. District Court. In mid-June, U.S. District Court Richard Bennett ruled Heasley and the Kallianassa crew should be disqualified because of the rules violations regarding the time of the catch and the failed polygraph exams and the $2.8 million top prize was later redistributed to the winners in several other categories.

Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney and SiriusXM host Raheem Kassam took a look on Wednesday’s Breitbart News Daily at the scandal swirling around former Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the shadowy computer firm she employed.

“I’m very heartened to hear that Congressman Ron DeSantis of Florida, the chairman of the National Security subcommittee of the Oversight Committee in the House of Representatives, is taking the bit in his teeth on this,” said Gaffney, referring to Rep. DeSantis’s call for a full investigation.

“I think the House leadership has been derelict in the extreme not to do so before now. Partly that’s been enabled by the press, but let’s face it: the press would probably cover it if there were an active congressional investigation going on,” Gaffney said.

“I think DeSantis is right when he says this is one of the most important congressional scandals of all time. Unfortunately, it’s not just Debbie Wasserman Schultz,” he noted.

“Imran Awan, the character who is at the center of this, says he’s a very big deal in Pakistan. Well, that could well mean he’s a big deal with the Pakistani intelligence service known as ISI, which has run operations against Congress in the past,” Gaffney explained.

Signs are everywhere these days urging Americans "If you see something, say something." Now, in Boston, new posters are going up that urge residents to go a step further and intervene if they see Islamophobic harassment. From a distance, it looks like a cute cartoon, until you read the bold black headline – "What to do if you are witnessing Islamophobic harassment." Below is a giant comic strip showing a young woman watching as a burly guy grimaces at a woman in a long dress and hijab.

"It is a sign of really frightening times," says 59-year-old Diane Shufro, who did a double take as she passed one of the posters on the side of a bus stop in Boston. But she says she's heartened to see city officials encouraging people to be involved. "I hope it gets people thinking," she says.

Step one, the poster implores: "Ignore the attacker." In other words, don't even make eye contact. Instead, the poster instructs, start talking to the person being attacked — about anything.

Hastings also pays his longtime girlfriend the maximum congressional salary

Democratic Rep. Alcee Hastings (Fla.) has paid a convicted money launderer nearly $75,000 for "part-time" work out of a district office, salary filings show.

Dona Nichols-Jones, the wife of Mikel Jones, a former staffer to Hastings who served as his district administrator from 1993 to 2011, is currently listed as an "aide" in his Palm Beach County office.

Dona Nichols-Jones, along with her husband, were convicted in 2011 of money laundering, conspiracy, and fraud after they had used hundreds of thousands of dollars from a business loan for personal use, the FBI announced in November 2011.

The couple's scheme stemmed from a loan that Mikel received to help finance a Philadelphia law firm he owned. Jones secured a multi-million line of credit from Stillwater, a New York-based lender, and agreed to only use the credit for legitimate expenses in relation to his firm's operation.

The Joneses set up a shell company and created fake invoices in order to funnel money to themselves. The stolen money was used to pay credit card bills and purchase tickets to sporting events.

Under Armour plans to cut about 2 percent of its global workforce as it restructures its business in the face of slumping sales.

On Tuesday, the sports apparel company reported a narrower-than-expected second-quarter loss, but shares fell as the company trimmed its sales forecast for the year.

Here's what the company reported vs. what Wall Street was expecting:

Earnings per share: a loss of 3 cents, adjusted, vs. an expected loss of 6 cents, according to Thomson ReutersRevenue: $1.088 billion vs. a forecast for $1.077 billion, analysts said

One year ago, Under Armour reported a loss of 12 cents per share on revenue of $1.001 billion.

Under Armour's stock tumbled more than 8 percent on the news, reaching a new intraday low of $18.20.

Under Armour said it now expects adjusted earnings for the full year to fall within 37 cents and 40 cents per share, excluding any impacts from restructuring. Analysts had been forecasting Under Armour to earn 42 cents a share in 2017, according to Thomson Reuters estimates.

A federal appeals court recently allowed a coalition of more than a dozen states to intervene in a long-running lawsuit challenging the legitimacy of billions of dollars in federal subsidy payments to insurance providers. But regardless of what happens in that case, President Trump has repeatedly dangled the threat that he could pull the plug on those payments at any time. The states coalition says it is preparing for that possibility and is ready to take the White House to court if necessary.

WASHINGTON — Montgomery County would lose 47,000 jobs in 5 years if the county raises the minimum wage from $11.50 to $15, according to a new study commissioned by County Executive Isiah “Ike” Leggett.

Most of the lost jobs would be low-paying ones, said the report, which was released Tuesday.

In January, Leggett vetoed a previous bill, which the Montgomery County Council had passed 5-4.

The study, by economic consulting group PFM, found raising the minimum wage would mean an aggregate loss of more than $396 million by 2022 and a projected loss of almost $41 million in income tax revenue.

Look, guys. I don’t know for sure whether or not aliens exist. But I do know that if they come after us, I want someone in charge of protecting the planet from harm. NASA wants that too, so they’re hiring a Planetary Protection Officer tasked with keeping us safe from outerspace threats.

Behind Scaramucci's removal as WH communications directorAnthony Scaramucci may have been removed as the White House communications director on Monday, but he’s not dead.

According to an alumni directory from Harvard Law School, Scaramucci’s alma mater, the man who led the White House communications team for less than two weeks was reported dead since the previous edition was released in 2011.

The directory included an asterisk next to Scaramucci’s name, implying his death, Fox 25 reported.

The error in the directory, which is published every five years and is available only to alumni of the Ivy League law school, was quickly noted.

Faced with a flood of asylum seekers traveling from the United States into Quebec, Canada, local authorities have repurposed Montreal's Olympic Stadium and turned it into a refugee welcome center.

A spokesperson for PRAIDA, the local government agency that helps refugees, tells the CBC more than 1,000 asylum seekers crossed the border into Quebec last month. "In comparison, PRAIDA helped 180 people in July 2016," the CBC writes.

The vast majority of the asylum seekers are Haitians who initially fled the devastating earthquake in 2010, and whose future status in the U.S. is unclear under the Trump administration.

OCEAN CITY — A foreign J-1 student trapped in a trash compactor at a north-end hotel last Saturday night suffered a broken pelvis and is on the mend, but will likely require multiple surgeries.

Around 5 p.m. last Friday, Ocean City emergency services responded to a reported individual trapped in a commercial trash compactor at the Carousel Hotel on 118th Street. First-responders found the victim, Petr Konig from the Czech Republic, a seasonal worker at the hotel in Ocean City on a J-1 work-travel visa, stuck in the trash compactor from the waist down.

Emergency crews extricated Konig from the trash compactor and the victim was transported to the University of Maryland Shock Trauma with critical injuries below the waist. According to reliable sources, Konig had been looking for his shoes and was told by a co-worker that they had been inadvertently thrown away.

A U.S. passport will only get you into North Korea for the rest of August, the State Department announced Wednesday.

In a notice posted to the federal register, the State Department said beginning September 1 U.S. passports will be invalid for travel to or within North Korea, withrare exceptions possibly granted to journalists and aid workers. The new rule will also apply to those currently in the country on U.S. passports; they were advised to depart in the next 30 days.

The State Department said the restriction is in response to "the serious risk to United States nationals of arrest and long-term detention."

The notice served mostly to put an effective date on a ban announced last month by the U.S. government.

When courts and medical authorities in England can overrule parents’ wishes and declare it is in the best interest of a child to let him die, it’s time to redouble efforts to protect parental rights here in America.

That’s what Home School Legal Defense Association recently told President Donald Trump.

As the sad and alarming case of 11-month-old Charlie Gard illustrates, the timing of our request could not be more critical.

As we wrote in our letter, “we believe that life is precious and that parents, not the government, know best how to protect and care for their children.”

The story of Charlie Gard and his parents “highlights the stark difference between our national values and those of internationalists who believe that government bureaucrats and the courts should decide how children should be raised and even whether a life is worth living.”

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has introduced legislation in the U.S. Senate to propose a Parental Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Graham’s Senate Joint Resolution 48 had four original cosponsors at its introduction on Tuesday, August 1: Roy Blunt (R-MO), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Johnny Isakson (R-GA), and Jim Risch (R-ID). Marco Rubio (R-FL) was added as an original cosponsor as well.

“We are gratified to see this crucial amendment introduced in the U.S. Senate for the fifth straight Congress,” declared ParentalRights.org President Jim Mason, a proponent of the resolution. “If the recent Charlie Gard tragedy in the UK showed us anything it is that children are better served when loving parents make the important decisions about their care.”

The Amendment, which would provide that “[t]he liberty of parents to direct the upbringing, education, and care of their children is a fundamental right,” requires a two-thirds vote in each house of Congress to go to the states for ratification. This means bipartisan support will be necessary for its passage.

Newly obtained emails from Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin reveal friends of the Clinton Foundation and political allies seeking personal favors from the Clinton State Department, Judicial Watch said Wednesday.

The batch of documents shows well-connected players, including a Clinton library donor, inquiring about meetings and job openings -- and Clinton aides carefully tending to those requests. The emails were among 1,606 pages the conservative watchdog group got from the State Department as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

“Pay to play, classified information mishandling, influence peddling, cover ups—these new emails show why the criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s conduct must be resumed,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement.

“In a startling revelation, news is breaking this week that Obama holdovers within the State Department are actively attempting to scrub its records to remove any mention of the ISIS genocide against Christians,” the organization reported.

Wells Fargo is back in the spotlight for another scandal. This time, for signing up 490,000 auto-loan customers for insurance they didn't need.

This comes less than a year after the bank generated a massive public outcry for opening millions of unwanted accounts for customers.

Customers who already had car insurance say they had no idea they were being charged for this insurance from Wells Fargo. And the bank acknowledges that tens of thousands of people wound up in default, which affected people's credit scores, and thousands had their cars repossessed.

Six months later...CNN's Fareed Zakaria has it figured out. Or at least he thinks he does.

Donald Trump became President Trump, the host mused, because Americans wanted to stick it to the elites.

"The election of Donald Trump is really a kind of class rebellion against people like us, educated professionals who live in cities, who have cosmopolitan views about things," Zakaria said.

"There's a part of America that is sick and tired of being told what to do by this overeducated population that Hillary Clinton perfectly represented. That's why they're sticking with him," he continued. (Free Beacon)

Zakaria went on to argue that during the campaign Trump monopolized on the "ugly racial animus" many voters already felt having to endure eight years of a black president. They felt threatened, Zakaria suggested, that minorities were beginning to try to claim the dominant status once held by the "white working man."

How often have we heard these same excuses from liberals? Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton blamed racism and sexism for her loss too - along with, of course, Russia and FBI Director James Comey. She's even writing a book what she thinks happened.

Now, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is finally admitting what the rest of us already knew - Hillary was an awful candidate. They had the right message, he argued. They just didn't have the right messenger.

Yet, too many "astute" analysts like Zakaria fail to consider that maybe Americans voted Trump into office because they liked his ideas and the direction he wanted to take the country.

According to Trump confidante Roger Stone, disgraced Debbie Wasserman Schultz aide Imran Awan was with former DNC staffer Seth Rich on the night of his murder.

Rich was murdered in an upscale area of Washington DC on July 10 last year but the killer or killers did not steal anything from the victim, rendering the police’s explanation that the incident was a robbery gone wrong doubtful.

Infowars reported on the questions surrounding Seth Rich’s murder multiple times back in August last year, including how there was around an hour and a half of “unaccounted for” time between Rich leaving a bar and being killed.

Brad Bauman, a crisis communications manager for the Democratic Party, was hired by Rich’s family to act as their spokesman.

Bauman’s first action was to insist that people stop questioning the unsolved circumstances behind Rich’s murder.

As Dostoyevsky wrote, a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel, so it’s of little surprise that a random airport worker lashed out with his fist at a passenger — a traveler who was not only holding an infant in his arms at the time, but who had languished for some 13 hours while waiting for his repeatedly delayed flight.

Buddy's is located on Wicomico Street in Ocean City. Go over the Rt. 50 Bridge and make an immediate right. Go four blocks and make a right on Wicomico Street. Go to the Bay and Buddy's is on the Bay to your left. Enjoy!

More than 30 children have died in hot cars so far in 2017, and two of those deaths occurred just last weekend. In an attempt to prevent these tragedies from happening, a group of lawmakers have once again introduced legislation that would require cars to be equipped with technology — that already exists — to alert drivers that a passenger remains in the back seat when a vehicle is turned off.

Obviously, from their comments among the 1.2 million filed last month on plans by President Trump to void Obama's and former President Bill Clinton's illegal decrees, environmentalists believe that baloney. They are wrong.

Obama's abuses of the Antiquities Act of 1906 are well known, including designation of an ocean monument off New England to kill fishing an unauthorized park parading as a monument in rural Maine to kill logging and milling and the 1.3 million acre Bear Ears in Utah to placate environmentalists. Largely forgotten everywhere but in the West was Clinton's designation of the 1.8 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

On behalf of the people of Southern Utah, my organization sued Clinton. For years, a courageous federal judge resisted Clinton's lawyers' efforts to dismiss the case; however, when former President George W. Bush's lawyers defended the decree, the judge figuratively threw up his hands. Our lawsuit was over and with it any hopes of limiting future presidents.

Given Trump’s respect for Kelly, the move could mark an important turning point in focusing the president’s time and efforts. Too many days have been squandered by leaks and conflicting and even contradictory messages.

Liberals are trying to mess with Texas. And they don't plan on stopping there.

Still reeling from nearly a decade of devastating losses in statehouses across the nation as well as in the 2016 presidential election, Democrats in Washington, D.C. are plotting to pour hundreds of millions of dollars in state and local elections across the country.

With the help of hedge fund billionaire George Soros, the National Democratic Redistricting Committee hopes to wrest control from voters of congressional re-districting in 2021 when booming conservative states such as Texas will gain seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. All for the benefit of their special-interest donors.

That the first fundraisers for this self-described "super group" were held in San Francisco and Los Angeles reveals one of their goals: to reinstate Rep. Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House. But they aren't stopping there.

European Union states are considering measures which would allow them to temporarily stop people withdrawing money from their accounts to prevent bank runs, an EU document reviewed by Reuters revealed.

The move is aimed at helping rescue lenders that are deemed failing or likely to fail, but critics say it could hit confidence and might even hasten withdrawals at the first rumors of a bank being in trouble.

The proposal, which has been in the works since the beginning of this year, comes less than two months after a run on deposits at Banco Popular contributed to the collapse of the Spanish lender.

Giving supervisors the power to temporarily block bank accounts at ailing lenders is “a feasible option,” a paper prepared by the Estonian presidency of the EU said, acknowledging that member states were divided on the issue.

EU countries which already allow a moratorium on bank payouts in insolvency procedures at national level, like Germany, support the measure, officials said.

“The desire is to prevent a bank run, so that when a bank is in a critical situation it is not pushed over the edge,” a person familiar with German government’s thinking said.

The Estonian proposal was discussed by EU envoys on July 13 but no decision was made, an EU official said. Discussions were due to continue in September. Approval of EU lawmakers would be required for any final decision.

Under the plan discussed by EU states, pay-outs could be suspended for five working days and the block could be extended to a maximum of 20 days in exceptional circumstances, the Estonian document said.

Smoking may leave people more vulnerable to suffering from phobias and other types of chronic fear like post-traumatic stress disorder, according to new research.

Scientists have found that tobacco smoke can impair the brain's ability to repress fear-related memories, leaving smokers less able to deal with fear and anxiety after a traumatic event.

It could have serious implications for people in jobs where they are most at risk of developing PTSD, such as in the armed forces. Around 33 percent of soldiers are thought to smoke.

The scientists behind the study believe chemicals in tobacco smoke may interfere with the messages between neurons in the brain - also known as neurotransmitters - that are involved in controlling fear.